Bin Laden’s death could lead to retaliatory attacks here, experts warn

A woman bows her head outside the World Trade Center site after the death of accused 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Laden was announced May 2, 2011 in New York City.Photo by
Mario Tama

Islamic extremists used “jihadist” websites Monday to encourage retaliatory attacks for the death of Osama bin Laden — prompting one former Canadian intelligence officer to warn that so-called “sleeper cells” in Canada and elsewhere could strike.

“The threat is there everywhere in the Western world,” said Michel Juneau-Katsuya, who served with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

“The thing we should pay much more attention to is the homegrown terrorism, (rather) than terrorism coming from abroad.”

Delivering a eulogy for bin Laden, one prominent member of the jihadist Internet community, writing as Asad al-Jihad 2, declared the battle “will not stop with the martyrdom of the dear loved one.”

“Let his enemies be miserable for, by Allah, we will take our revenge,” the posting said, according to the monitoring service SITE.

Another frequent contributor, identified by SITE as jihadist scholar Hussein bin Mahmoud, called for bin Laden’s followers to develop “specific, well-planned attacks rather than launch random attacks.”

One jihadist site threatened travellers, saying: “We will have an incident with . . . American tourists.”

“Canadians residing in or travelling to areas where anti-Western violence could occur are advised to exercise a high degree of caution, monitor local news, avoid public gatherings and demonstrations, and stay away from areas where they may take place, as they could turn violent without warning,” says the advisory.

Within Canada, the RCMP said it was assessing “the potential impacts” of bin Laden’s death on the country’s terrorism-threat level, and would “adjust security measures for diplomatic properties . . . as required.”

Beyond urging violence, many jihadist sites also expressed incredulity that bin Laden had been killed.

Some even deleted contributor postings quoting Western news sources that reported on the death, with one forum administrator demanding that members wait until the information is “confirmed by mujahedeen sources” before making any comment.

But as postings about bin Laden’s death continued to pile up, SITE said, commentators began writing that they were also praying for the former al-Qaida leader to “be accepted as a martyr.”

Juneau-Katsuya said attempts at retaliatory attacks are inevitable in the near future.

“Security forces of the Western world, Canada included, will have to be, in the next weeks and months, extremely vigilant in trying to pick up any indicators and red flags that can show that there is an attack being prepared against us or any allies,” he said.

“The nature of al-Qaida is that it’s a very non-rigid structure, allowing its participants, supporters and soldiers to operate on their own and to take their own initiative if they want to.”

Such a structure makes followers of the ideology particularly dangerous, he said, because “they don’t need to report to the central head of the organization to get approval for an attack.”

The next step in undermining al-Qaida, Juneau-Katsuya said, is to keep up the pressure and continue to target top-ranking officials within the terror group as quickly as possible.

He said U.S. forces and their allies should seek to eliminate al-Qaida officials “in a matter of days.” He said he believes that, in many cases, the whereabouts of these individuals were known to security agencies — but they stayed their hands in the hopes that one of them would lead back to bin Laden.

“Now (other al-Qaida leaders) have served their purpose, bin Laden is not there anymore, (U.S. forces) may decide to strike even further into trying to behead the leadership of al-Qaida,” he said.

“It’s far from being over. What we must understand is the motivation of terrorism. Terrorism is not like organized crime, where they do it for money. In the case of terrorism, they are motivated by certain situations — ideological or religious.”

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